Elias Voss, 62, retired smokejumper turned wildfire mitigation consultant, leaned against the scuffed oak bar of The Pine Tap, the cuff of his frayed plaid flannel soaking up a ring of condensation from his root beer. He’d shown up to the annual county fire department cook-off only because his old crew had threatened to drag him out of his cabin if he bailed again, and he’d spent the last hour dodging well-meaning questions about when he’d “finally stop moping and find someone.” He hated that question. Twelve years after his wife died in a car crash on her way to bring him lunch at a fire site, he’d built his whole life around not looking for anything new, not letting anyone close enough to make him forget the sound of her laugh, the way she left sticky honey dippers on the kitchen counter. The self-imposed isolation was his flaw, he knew it, but he’d convinced himself it was the only honorable way to grieve.
The jukebox blared Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” over the din of hooting firefighters and the sharp, savory smell of chili simmering in dented cast iron pots, and he was just debating slipping out the back door when a woman stumbled into him, a tray of peach cobbler samples tipping just enough to dribble golden syrup down his left sleeve. He looked down first, then up, and found himself staring into the warm brown eyes of Marisol Ruiz, the 58-year-old who ran the native plant nursery on the edge of town. He’d driven past her place a hundred times, slowed down to look at the rows of sage and wildflower she tended, had even bought a packet of milkweed seeds there last spring, but he’d never spoken more than two words to her. She smelled like cedar and jasmine shampoo, and she was standing so close their shoulders were pressed together, her hand brushing his forearm as she dabbed at the syrup stain with a crumpled paper napkin.
“Dammit, I’m so sorry,” she said, grinning like she wasn’t sorry at all, her thumb grazing the raised scar on his wrist from a 2019 wildfire burn. “These cheap tray legs give out if you so much as look at them wrong. You’d think the fire department could spring for better serving ware for a fundraiser.” He didn’t say anything at first, too busy noticing the way the string lights above the bar caught the silver streaks in her dark curly hair, the calluses on her fingers from digging in dirt, the way her knee kept bumping his as she wiped at the stain. For half a second he wanted to lean in, to smell that jasmine again, and then the guilt hit him sharp, like a punch to the gut. He stepped back, putting a foot of space between them, and mumbled that it was fine, that the flannel was already covered in ash and pine sap anyway.
She raised an eyebrow, clearly noticing how he’d pulled away. “You know, I see you driving past my nursery every Saturday at 10 a.m. sharp. You never stop, except that one time you bought milkweed. You just cruise real slow, like you’re scared to come in.” He felt his face heat up, the way it hadn’t since he was a teenager asking a girl to prom. He had no excuse, so he shrugged, said he liked looking at the flowers. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of the bar, and grabbed his wrist, her grip firm, not letting him pull away this time. “C’mon. It’s too loud in here. I got a cooler of hard lemonade in my truck out back, if you’re not a prude about drinking around a bunch of firefighters.”
He hesitated for a full ten seconds, every part of him screaming that this was wrong, that he was betraying his wife by even considering going anywhere alone with another woman, but then he looked at her smile, at the way she was still holding his wrist like she knew he needed a little push, and he nodded. They slipped out the side door, the cool October air hitting his face immediately, crickets chirping in the pine trees lining the parking lot, fireflies blinking low over the grass next to the building. She sat on the tailgate of her beat-up Ford F-150, popped the cap off a lemonade and handed it to him, and he took it, even though he hadn’t had a drink since his wife’s funeral.
They sat quiet for a minute, sipping their drinks, and then she said, “I lost my husband eight years ago. Heart attack, out of nowhere. I spent three years not letting anyone come within ten feet of me, thought if I was happy again I’d be forgetting him.” He froze, the bottle halfway to his mouth. No one had ever said that to him, no one had ever understood the stupid, gnawing guilt that ate at him every time he even thought about doing something that didn’t involve remembering his wife. She shifted closer on the tailgate, their thighs pressing together now, and she laced her fingers through his, her palm warm and rough against his. “Turns out grief doesn’t work like that. They wouldn’t want us wasting the rest of our lives being miserable, right?”
He didn’t answer right away, turning her words over in his head, the weight of twelve years of guilt feeling a little lighter just from having someone say them out loud. He squeezed her hand, and for the first time in over a decade, he didn’t push the feeling away, didn’t tell himself he didn’t deserve to feel something warm, something new. He asked her if she wanted to get pancakes at the 24-hour diner on Main Street the next morning, the one that served blueberry pancakes big enough to cover a plate. She grinned, said only if he came to the nursery first to help her plant a row of sagebrush along the fence line, that the heavy pots were too much for her to lift alone. He agreed, no hesitation this time.
The string lights from the bar glinted off the silver hoops in her ears, and a stray curl blew across her face, carried by a soft gust of wind. He tucked it behind her ear, his thumb brushing the curve of her cheek, and for the first time in 12 years, he didn’t feel guilty for wanting to stay.
